Which is all a roundabout way to saying that the NHL needs to get smart to better compete for the shrinking North American entertainment dollar. To that end, number one is re-alignment, which I've goofed around with for a long time before this article took it on.

Travel expenses must be reduced, rivalries intensified, and league-wide exposure increased. So, I propose: go to four divisions (which I have optimized for regional rivalries, though Buffalo tortures me), play each team not in your division home and home, and play the rest of your games against your division.

In the playoffs, you have to play out of your division and, just to throw in a few extra playoff gates, have seeds 4 and 5 do a home-and-home total goal playoff, like soccer. And, just for fun, forget the conferences and rotate the divisions in the last two rounds, like the NCAA basketball tournament. Ever since the league had the Stanley Cup Playoff logo with "west" on the right and "east" on the left, I've sensed that NHL's conferences were, perhaps, false distinctions.

My proposed divisions:

> New York Rangers, New York Islanders, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Columbus, Boston

Translated

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Based in suburban Detroit, I am an attorney running my own practice focusing on family law, business law, estate planning and entertainment law. I also have an extensive history in Detroit media, having been a founder of 89X, a long-time columnist for the Metro Times, and appearing on-air on a host of "The Lex Files" on the Michigan Talk Radio Network and a correspondent for "Backstage Pass" on Detroit Public Television, as well as various other radio stations.

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Welcome to my somewhat cranky, yet gregarious and optimistic, 60 Second Blog,featuring unique takes on anything and everything that I care about, which can be a lot. So, look for posts on Birmingham, Detroit, Michigan, the Great Lakes and beyond, politics, pop culture, music, sports, business and The Internets, and connecting the dots between them. Not just opinions, though, but the occasional modest proposal on how things could be better here, there and everywhere. The title? Well, the conceit is that each post will take less than 60 seconds of your precious time to read. I will occasionally go over that limit, so I will mark it as an "OT" post in the headline. For a bit more background on me, please check out a profile posted here. Thanks for visiting, and remember: when you kill time, you murder success. As always, cheers from The D.